


It's a New Place

by mindthetarget



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Metaphors, Sleep, Sleeplessness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-04
Updated: 2015-09-04
Packaged: 2018-04-18 22:55:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4723382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mindthetarget/pseuds/mindthetarget
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it's hard to sleep. It might be the new place. But no...if he's being honest, it's what's missing from it...</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's a New Place

**Author's Note:**

> Recommended listening: [I And Love And You](https://youtu.be/T0eSpAgqrWo) by the Avett Brothers.
> 
> Also posted on [tumblr](http://mindthetarget.tumblr.com/post/128307921955/one-shot-its-a-new-place).

_It's a new place_ , he reasons.  _That's why I can't sleep_.

But it's more than that. It's always been more than that, when he finds himself lying awake in the dead of night, staring up at a ceiling or into the fabric of a pillowcase, counting his breaths for sheep, and in vain. He'll be awake still when the sun rises to join him and he'll rise from bed to join the day.

The problem with superhealing is that it applies even to sleep. He should be exhausted and sick with sleep deprivation, but instead, the serum in his body restores weary blood vessels and lagging brain cells to make up for the loss of rest. He can sleep. He does sleep. He gets tired. If he goes to bed and lets himself fall into unconsciousness before tiredness wears off, he sleeps. Never more than six or seven hours, but it's nice to dream sometimes.

As long as it's not nightmares.

But if he stays awake a little too long while tired, the serum catches up and he will not sleep.

That's not why this time though.

It's not the new apartment either. He thought that moving back into Brooklyn, which should have been familiar, would help him to sleep at night. Familiar streets and buildings and signs and the trees might be a little bigger, the concrete might be darker, but...

No. Brooklyn is not his Brooklyn anymore. There are things he likes, but this Brooklyn is a stranger to him. She's grown up and grown away from the tender, bruised borough of his long ago youth. She's put on the lipstick of fresh paint and straightened the crooked iron of her bars. They aren't going steady anymore, and she's moved on from him. He isn't sure he can love her again.

He's trying though. He's finding new things and new places and new faces to love in his new neighborhood. He unpacks a couple of boxes every evening and he's installed a shelf for books. He wasn’t supposed to be doing this alone, but the world interrupted and called his other set of hands away right before move-in.

The new apartment has a window off the tiny living space that welcomes sunlight almost three quarters of the day. Natasha made him buy a houseplant for the windowsill when he picked up the keys from the super on Thursday.

"Cactus are good," she'd said. "Less care, when you're gone all the time. They survive."

Tony had a victrola delivered. He may have meant it as a jibe, but the music eases the nostalgia a little. He's installed another shelf for vinyl records—thank God for hipsters bringing vinyl back.

Barton comes by sometimes, offers to take him around the city, help him get reacquainted. But he'd rather do it by himself, soak it into his bones again one-on-one.

A car turns past the building, and the shadows on his wall glide at angles in answer to the passing headlights. He thinks, for the breadth of a heartbeat, that one looks like a familiar figure's silhouette. He almost sits up in bed.

But he catches himself and remembers,  _No, that's the lamp I bought this morning_.

He turns over beneath the covers and sighs against the pillow.

 _It's a new place_ , he tells himself.  _That's why I can't sleep._

But his hand slides across the cool, empty surface of the second pillow next to his own, and his fingers know the truth he is trying hard not to think of, because if he does he won't sleep for days to come. He sleeps better when that space is not empty, when it’s warmed by the weight of someone who knows sleepless nights as well as he does. He needs that space filled, and knowing it is empty, and not knowing where the body that belongs there is or if it is safe, even if only for a few days, churns through his mind.

Then some kinder corner of his mind catches on a better way to think of the hollow space in the new place...

 _It's okay_ , Steve reasons.  _Bucky will be home on Tuesday, and he'll be pissed if I haven't gotten any sleep since he left._

He closes his eyes and curls his fingers into Bucky's pillow, and dreams of Tuesday morning light through the window, and Bucky laughing at his puny new cactus on the windowsill.

“It takes less care,” Steve will tell him. “It can survive when you’re gone all the time.” Like he can. Steve can survive not knowing where Bucky is for a few days, a few nights. It’s nothing compared to thinking the sun was gone forever from his world for so long. This is easier, a few dark nights without the light to soak in. He can be the cactus waiting on the windowsill for the morning sun to rise.

Yes, he can survive. But that doesn’t mean he won't be glad to see him return, one Brooklyn boy to another, even if this Brooklyn may be a new place.

It’s  _their_ new place.

He sleeps.


End file.
